


Sleeping Beauty, Sleeping Boy

by 1001cranes



Category: Everworld Series - K. A. Applegate
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-07
Updated: 2011-08-07
Packaged: 2017-10-22 08:44:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1001cranes/pseuds/1001cranes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Very loosely based on Sleeping Beauty. Certainly not the Disney Version, that's for sure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleeping Beauty, Sleeping Boy

When David was ten his parents’ marriage started to crumble. His mother’s mood swings became wilder, his father’s absences more notable. They were going to get a divorce. It was the D-word around David, but he knew what it was and he knew it was coming too. When it happened it wasn’t going to be pretty, and his parents didn’t want David to see. They didn’t want him to break too. They sent him to summer camp, to a little cottage in the woods, a place of sunshine and water and green. It was supposed to keep him safe.

It was a nightmare.

He remembers lying in his bunk bed night after night, wishing he was dead, pretending, imagining a little doll lying in his place. Lay it down and its eyes stay shut. It lies still, blind, won’t open its eyes until someone sets it upright again.

In some ways he’s still that little doll, playing at being a boy.

Donny.

He dreams of him every time he sees a white windbreaker. He still dreams of him. That summer David learned white is a beacon in the darkness. But not always a symbol of innocence.

~

He sleeps still. He doesn’t think he ever woke up. There are worse things than sleeping. At least asleep he can call it a dream. No matter how lonely or frightening or sad, it’s just a dream. And if it’s just a dream, it’ll finally be better when he wakes up.

It has to be.

~

He doesn’t remember exactly how he met Senna or when he learned her name. All he remembers are these little fragments of her, some flash of her face in the school hallways, a glimpse of white-blonde hair, dancing at someone’s party, little pieces that snapped into place.

He remembers their first kiss perfectly.

“I’ll make you forget,” she whispered. Her voice was like a drug, cloying and nebulous. He took a chance and believed her. He floated. He learned that whatever Senna promised came to pass. For a price. Senna’s skin and hair are white like the snow in the morning sun, so bright your own eyes refuse to see. She was like a vaguely unsettling dream you couldn’t quite remember in the daytime. Disturbing, yet strangely pleasant, and you weren’t sure whether to call her a nightmare or not.

She introduced him to her half-sister April, an Irish goddess, an actress, a girl who was anyone and everyone and no one all at once. She would take David out for spring rolls and green tea and listen to all the things he said in his silence. She told him stories of kingdoms long decayed and longer gone, of knights of old and the dragons they had slain. He was either a knight or a dragon, she told him, but it was too soon to tell exactly which.

He met Jalil at April’s house.

Jalil made people uncomfortable because in his presence you felt like an insect but weren’t quite sure why. It wasn’t because he was smarter than you -- of course he was smarter than you, he was a genius. It wasn’t that. It wasn’t the knowing. Maybe it was how he knew, how he looked at you just turning his head and never moving his eyes. Maybe not. Maybe it was the way he moved – conscious, concentrated grace, every movement, every twist of the hand perfectly thought out and executed. That was probably what scared people. David didn’t mind it. Like David, Jalil seemed incapable of having human emotion. Jalil thought it was too dangerous. David didn’t remember how.

There’s something in each of them that calls to the other. Sometimes David feels it with other people too. People he passes on the street or in the hall, the customers he serves coffee to at his job. When he sees them he wants to scream. Are they like him too? Do they feel like he feels? And the worst part is he doesn’t even know why. It’s a terrible feeling, a terrible empathy. He is who they are. He doesn’t know why, but he feels it.

It’s easy to see sometimes. He’s seen the silvery lines on Senna’s wrists and inner thighs. He’s seen the little scar on April’s forefinger, the one that looks like a burn mark. He’s seen the blood on Jalil’s knuckles.

Sometimes. Sometimes it’s easy to see. Other scars, like David’s, are worn on the inside.

~

He goes to April’s parties. Cast parties. She has a lot of them. Not always at her house, but they’re still always _her_ parties. She is the queen of the stage and people pay homage as they should. Right now they’re sitting on the porch, and April is up to her elbows in roses and lilies and tulips, reading card after card.

When David brings Senna her usual drink, he notices there’s a newcomer tonight. Someone who doesn’t really belong in April’s following of drama students and art geeks and other school misfits. Christopher Hitchcock. Not high school A-list in the strictest sense. He isn’t a jock, isn’t dating a vapid beauty queen. He’s the class clown, to be pissed off at your own peril. If Christopher liked you he’d only make fun of you when you did something stupid enough to deserve it. Otherwise you found yourself on the receiving end of all of his jokes. Christopher had a talent for them – you couldn’t shrug them off, no matter how confident you were.

He slips into the party atmosphere. He chats; he bounces from conversation to conversation and holds his own. David can’t take his eyes off of him, and neither can anyone else. He’s cute in the way April likes. Senna takes a sip of her drink. Jalil’s fingers tap a rapid tattoo on the tabletop.

“Like Mercutio,” April whispers. “Just as clever as Mercutio.”

“Just as doomed?” Jalil asks wryly.

“Perhaps,” is all Senna says. “Perhaps.” She looked like Atropos, eyeing his life thread, deciding exactly where to cut.

David doesn’t say anything. David sees him for what he really is. A chameleon. Fitting in everywhere while belonging nowhere. His disguise is flawless, or nearly. David can see the one seam running through him because he knows exactly where to look. Like April, Christopher wears his high school mask better than most. Like Senna, there is on crack in his façade. Like Jalil, he doesn’t want anyone to see it.

The boy who played Roger Davis in last year’s musical passes Christopher a beer. The look on Christopher’s face makes David shiver. Like he found his greatest desire and fear wrapped in one. David knows that look. He sees it every time he closes his eyes.

That is how he is like David.

He wants to fuck. He wants to bury himself in April, in her warmth and her bed and her sleepy forgetfulness. He wants Senna, to slide into the delicious perfect illusion that only she can give him. He wants to touch Jalil, for Jalil to touch him, if only to prove that maybe sometimes it can be all right.

He could do it. He could drag April away from her guests, Senna from her dreaming. He could get Jalil, he thinks, because Jalil has no emotions save one – the wanting. And it is the wanting that makes Jalil human.

They still watch Christopher. They watch him.

Christopher belongs with them. David sees it. They all see it. But what will it do, the four of them becoming five? Will Christopher want Senna and April as well? Will Christopher want Jalil? That’s all right, David supposes, but will he understand that Jalil can’t want him back? Will he take them all from David? Will he want David?

Will he want David?

That, suddenly, is the most important question of all.

 _Will he want David?_

And David finds himself drawing away from them, this triad that safeguards him. Sisters, brother, mothers, father, lovers, friends. He’s pulled away, called by something beyond his reasoning. Something new or something so old, so long forgotten that it may as well be. Does he approach the beginning of the circle or the end?

The breakup of their group is inevitable. David did not know this until now. April and Senna and Jalil knew. They didn’t look on Christopher as an addition to the group. They saw him as the dissident. A threat. They looked upon him and knew he was the catalyst. They knew he brought about the end. April knows this because she knows what David thinks. Senna knows this because she knows why David sleeps. Jalil knows because that is what he does.

This is the end.

Senna puts her hand on David’s thigh. He can feel it, burning, through his jeans.

“Come,” she insists. “Let’s go.”

Now April stands and tugs on his hand. April’s other hand reaches for Senna.

“Come here,” Senna says again, why shouldn’t he? The three of them together, he sees. Flashes of skin in David’s mind, soft and warm, red hair and blonde, sets of different colored eyes with the same look in them. Together. Never done that, never should, isn’t right. But they’re desperate. They don’t want it to end. He doesn’t either, not really. But all of Senna’s magic can’t make him forget what he knows. And all of April’s illusions won’t change what he’s seen.

Jalil sits quietly. No promises. No begging, no pleading, no bargaining. Jalil knows the meaning of inevitable.

“David,” April says, and though her voice is perfectly steady he can see the panic in her eyes. She’s wearing a peasant skirt tonight, a bracelet of hammered coins. It swirls, it jangles. Her perfume twists around him.

Why should he do this? Why should he throw away the only good thing in his life?

Maybe because something lies dormant beneath his skin. Sometimes it felt like the best thing in the world would be to get rid of it. Mostly he was too afraid. Christopher makes it itch. And Senna makes him afraid.

He stands and heads for the stairs. “I don’t think so.”

He’s defied her, but he doesn’t feel any better.

~

David walks over to Christopher. He’s standing with a bunch of students. David recognizes a Shylock, a Nurse, a Dr. Spivey, and two or three trees. He doesn’t know their names. He never remembers their names.

When they see him they double take. They don’t recognize him. He’s the dark shadow in the background, the perfect foil to April’s flame and Senna’s light. He’s never stood on his own before.

“David.”

Of course they would know _his_ name.

And he doesn’t remember what he says to them, because words aren’t important. It never matters what you say. What matters is if you are understood. And Christopher understands David exactly, like they knew this moment was coming, like it had been in the making their whole lives, hiding, waiting to be acknowledged.

It doesn’t matter what he says as long as Christopher understands it.

They walk away from the party like there’s no price to pay. And with Senna, there’s always a price. David’s remembering this now. Just now. He’d almost be afraid of it, except he knows he’d pay any price.

He’s got a nice buzz going. Maybe it’s the drinks, maybe it’s the company. Maybe it’s the music; it’s thudding from the house in loud waves, throbbing in his veins all the way through him, tips of his toes to the sweat on his temples. He’s dizzy.

He sits. Flops on the ground, grass tickling his back where his shirt’s ridden up. Christopher sits down beside him, and if they talk its nothing important.

He will pay any price for this.

~

David feels Christopher touch his face. Lightly, just a whisper across his cheekbone. Wiping away the cobwebs.

David opens his eyes.

Christopher starts. His thumb digs into the side of David’s face. “I thought you were asleep.”

“I’m pretty good at pretending,” David says, and closes his eyes again.

“So I see.” Christopher’s fingers begin to again move over David’s face. It’s quiet for a little while. Quiet as it gets anyway, with April’s party roaring a hundred feet away. “Sleeping now?”

“What answer do you want from me, Christopher?” David asks quietly. His lips curve into something cold and terrible.

“Since an answer implies you’re awake, I guess it doesn’t matter, does it?”

Christopher doesn’t let go of him.

“I think I’m asleep either way,” David says finally.

Christopher’s fingers smooth over David’s eyelids. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I understand that.” His fingers tangle in David’s hair and tilt his chin gently backwards. David stays loose, allows himself to be moved, and something, some feeling in the pit of his stomach begs to be released.

When Christopher kisses him, it's like pulling the thorns from the roses, like calling forth Morpheus and banishing Hypnos forever. Like desire without the fear.

“Awake now?”

“Yeah.”

He doesn’t have to open his eyes to know that Christopher is smiling.


End file.
